|
When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by
the fact of awakening to manifoldness;- before, it was a
preparation, so to speak, of the Beings, their fore-promise, a
total of henads offering a stay for what was to be based upon
them.
Here with us a man will say "I wish I had such and such a
quantity of gold"- or "such and such a number of houses." Gold is
one thing: the wish is not to bring the numerical quantity into
gold but to bring the gold to quantity; the quantity, already
present in the mind, is to be passed on to the gold so that it
acquire that numerical value.
If the Beings preceded the number and this were discerned upon
them at the stirring, to such and such a total, of the numbering
principle, then the actual number of the Beings would be a chance
not a choice; since that total is not a matter of chance, Number
is a causing principle preceding that determined total.
Number then pre-exists and is the cause by which produced things
participate in quantity.
The single thing derives its unity by participation in
Unity-Absolute; its being it derives from Being-Absolute, which
holds its Being from itself alone; a unity is a unity in virtue
of Being; the particular unity- where the unity is a multiple
unity- is one thing only as the Triad is; the collective Being is
a unity of this kind, the unity not of the monad but of the
myriad or any such collective number.
Take a man affirming the presence of ten thousand things; it is
he that produces the number; he does not tell us that the ten
thousand have uttered it; they merely exhibit their several
forms; the enumerator's mind supplies the total which would never
be known if the mind kept still.
How does the mind pronounce?
By being able to enumerate; that is by knowing Number: but in
order to this, Number must be in existence, and that that
Principle should not know its own total content is absurd,
impossible.
It is with Number as with Good. When we pronounce things to be
good either we mean that they are in their own nature so or we
affirm goodness as an accidental in them. Dealing with the
primals, the goodness we have in mind is that First Hypostasis;
where the goodness is an accidental we imply the existence of a
Principle of Good as a necessary condition of the accidental
presence; there must be some source of that good which is
observed elsewhere, whether this source be an Absolute Good or
something that of its own nature produces the good. Similarly
with number; in attributing the decad to things we affirm either
the truly existent decad or, where the decadhood is accidental,
we necessarily posit the self-subsistent decad, decad not
associated; if things are to be described as forming a decad,
then either they must be of themselves the decad or be preceded
by that which has no other being than that of decadhood.
It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a
subject not itself either found its way in from outside or is the
characteristic Act of that subject; and supposing the predicated
attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be
always present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is
the accidental in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at
least belongs to the existents, it exists. In the case when the
subject can be thought of as remaining without its Act, yet that
Act is inbound with it even though to our minds it appears as a
later; when on the contrary the subject cannot be conceived
without the attribute-man, for example, without unity- then the
attribute is either not later but concomitant or, being essential
to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and Number are
precedent.
|
|